Java EE 6 Platform Highlights the JavaOne Conference

fact sheet

Vendor's Information:
About 2009 JavaOne Conference
About Sun Microsystems

With a history dating back to 1996, the JavaOne conference is the place where Java technology professionals—from Sun Microsystems and beyond, including the developers who build the specifications for the Java platform and its components and associated technologies—share knowledge in an offline environment. This year's Conference and its colocated sister conference, CommunityOne, again expect many thousands of attendees.

"The JavaOne conference is where you get the latest technical content from the people who work on Java technology every day," says Roberto Chinnici, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specification lead at Sun.

This year attendees can expect much of the focus to be on the Java EE 6 platform. Chinnici says the JavaOne conference will provide a great opportunity for attendees to learn about new features in Java EE 6 technology and to gather forward-looking information about the Java platform that might affect developers and their projects in coming years.

Among the original goals for Java EE 6 technology were improving ease of development, increasing extensibility, and delivering true pluggability to make it easier for developers to take advantage of third-party and open-source technologies that work with the Java platform. The Java EE technology team also wanted to prune some of the outdated APIs that had been superseded by newer ones in recent years, to keep the size of the platform in check. The result is new versions of all the major Java EE 6 platform specifications—and the JavaOne conference is the best place to learn about what's new and how to take advantage of the changes.

Sessions are in the works that discuss, for example, the new version of the Java Servlet API, which includes asynchronous support intended to make the server-side processing of AJAX applications more efficient. The Java Servlet 3.0 API also features enhancements to Web framework pluggability and security. In addition, there will be sessions that cover major APIs such as Java Persistence API 2.0; Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.1 and JavaServer Faces 2.0 technology; and other new technologies—all aimed at reducing complexity for developers.

"These are sessions that should definitely not be missed," Chinnici says.

The GlassFish open-source application server project will also be prominently featured in JavaOne conference sessions. GlassFish application server architect Jérôme Dochez is speaking at the Conference, as are the developers of some of the most important GlassFish application server modules.

The Conference provides an excellent opportunity for GlassFish application server users and developers to meet in person and exchange ideas and feedback. "It's an open-source project, and community building is a big part of that," Chinnici says.

With so many tracks and speakers, how do you navigate the world of the JavaOne conference and get the most out of this important event? Start off by getting an understanding of the types of sessions available to attendees.

The JavaOne conference is made up of technical sessions, Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions, and Hands-on Lab sessions. For most attendees, choosing sessions is a matter of selecting the topics that are of most interest to them and will help them with their current and future projects.

There are also general sessions, where big names in the Java technology world look ahead at what's coming up. "I think people attending for the first time should go to the general sessions for the larger picture," Chinnici says.

Technical sessions are one-hour formal presentations to a large audience, with a speaker or multiple speakers on stage. These tend to focus on the future direction of Java technology.

BOF sessions are held in smaller rooms, are more informal, and are more focused on specific parts of the larger technology. They often consist of a brief 15-minute presentation, followed by a Q&A session and an audience discussion. "This is where the community really gets together," Chinnici explains.

The Hands-on Labs run for about three hours in a classroom environment. Attendees sit at computers and have an instructor and training materials. Unlike more forward-looking technical sessions, the lab sessions focus on current technology that attendees can use as soon as they get back to work.

The JavaOne conference features a core group of speakers, including book authors and creators of the technology, who have been speaking at the event since its very beginning in 1996. The Conference organizers try to balance the speakers between Sun employees and people with other affiliations, because, as Chinnici says, "the Java EE platform is a lot bigger than Sun."

In case the sessions aren't quite enough, there's also an opportunity for Java User Groups (JUGs) to get together and trade information at the Conference. More than 40 JUGs assemble at the Conference each year to take part in community activities. For this year, the JUG that registers the most JavaOne conference attendees gets a special meeting with Sun's James Gosling, typically referred to as the father of Java technology.